Willem Dafoe Quotes
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I feel like it's important to be flexible, particularly when I'm coming in late in the game and I'm connective tissue in the story. I'm not at the very center. It's important for me to have a certain kind of flexibility and try to help people do what they need to do.
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I've never had any close male friends. The most important relationships in my life have always been with women.
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With theatre, you have to be ready for anything.
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One of the pleasures of being an actor is quite simply taking a walk in someone else's shoes. And when I look at the roles I've played, I'm kind of amazed at all the wonderful adventures I've had and the different things I've learned.
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I'm more interested in talking about what I do. And I don't think people are interested in my personal life. I've never had a Hollywood life. I've always been a worker. But it's true: If you know something about a person outside of the movie that is really repulsive to you, it's hard to shake. So I prefer to do my speaking through the work. I don't want people to know anything about me, because that's not important. I'm more interested in the me that takes shape through these characters. The other stuff is personal and too easy to trivialize out of context.
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Usually when you meet with a director, just meeting them after you've seen something you're interested in, they say, "Oh I'd love to work together," and sometimes you never hear from them again.
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I set myself challenges every time I work. Ideally I approach everything as though it's the first time - with a beginner's mind and an amateur's love.
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Film is fragmented and gets into lots of other people's hands. There are a lot of pleasures that theatre gives me. You get to perform uninterrupted.
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I'm no different to anyone else; I want people to like me. I just don't particularly want them to understand me.
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It's no fun for an actor to keep repeating what you did before. It's always changing. I'm changing. The target keeps moving. That's the beauty of it.
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Sometimes you feel like you have to do research to make something, other times you know you don't feel it so much.
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If you get stuck and it feels a little stiff, then you do have to mess it up to find it. But other times it's really written and you just stick to your guns and do it as elegantly and as concentrated and as committed as you can.
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Emotionally men and women are different, but only as a result of the physical differences. It all comes back to our bodies.
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I don't worry so much about the audience. I want them very much to be involved and enjoy the movie, but I try to just inhabit the character in a full way, where I can create a personal stake.
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I don't think people are interested in my personal life. I've never had a Hollywood life. I've always been a worker.
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When you have something to work with, then you fly with it.
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I try to attach myself to people who really inspire me, and directors who are really passionate. That way, I can give myself more fully and trust the impulse behind why the film is being made, and I can be a little more irresponsible in finding out what the character is.
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When I was a kid I was very interested in the idea of the will, finding out what you're capable of. I liked those kind of challenges.
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I think on some level, you do your best things when you're a little off-balance, a little scared. You've got to work from mystery, from wonder, from not knowing.
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Plenty of bad movies are very successful, and plenty of good movies are not. And distribution is so crazy, some films won't even get their day in court.
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I like to work with people of different cultures, different points of view. But yeah, I feel much more comfortable. That's the problem I sometimes have with going to Hollywood. I feel like they don't share the same values as I do. They aren't interested in the same things. It's not always true, but sometimes, I feel it deeply, because as an industry, they celebrate things that I'm less interested in, and it's all about the business.
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I never act. I simply bring out the real animal that's in me.
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It's true in the beginning I started playing villains, and I think that's pretty clear, because if you don't conventionally look a certain way and you've got a certain kind of presence when you're young, then what's available to you is character roles, and the best character roles when you're young tend to be villains.
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I'm learning in my old age that the only thing you can do to keep your sanity is to stay in the moment.